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Shrinking telomeres linked to heart disease 00:01 12 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Michael Day The gradual erosion of telomeres – the strands of DNA that cap our chromosomes and wear away with each cell division – may play a pivotal role in heart disease. People who go on to have heart attacks have much shorter telomeres than those who remain healthy, a major new study has shown. Researchers from Leicester and Glasgow Universities in the UK took blood samples from 484 middle-aged men with moderately raised cholesterol, plus 1058 control subjects. They compared the telomere lengths in their white...

A Presbyterian and an Episcopalian walk into a bar ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 18, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Jim Rutz -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com It's 95 degrees today – too hot to discuss anything serious – so I'm going to write about the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, who seem intent upon turning their sacred franchises into a comedy show. As you know, presbyopia is the visual malady that renders its victims unable to see what's right in front of their noses. Presbyterian comes from the same root word, presbys, meaning old, or perhaps in this case, over the hill. The...

AL-QAEDA chief Osama bin Laden operates in an increasingly narrow area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, US spy chief John Negroponte said. "I think he's operating from a narrower and narrower corner of space in that Pakistan-Afghanistan border area," Mr Negroponte told NBC television's Today Show. Asked what worried him most, he replied: "It's the international terrorists. It's al-Qaeda. What is it we don't know?" The former ambassador to Iraq oversees 16 spy agencies - including the CIA - as the first director of national intelligence, a post set up as part of an effort to reform counter-terrorism efforts after...

There is new evidence that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has misled voters as to the actual need for its gargantuan and highly expensive building program. The district's latest estimates show that enrollment in the nation's second largest school district is declining much more rapidly than previously revealed. The precipitous decline could result in some of the schools now being built with bond money sitting as empty and useless as Saddam Hussein's former palaces. The reaction of most citizens of Los Angeles to the mere mention of LAUSD is intense disgust. After all, this district has built a...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is losing the support of Republicans, according to a new poll released on the eve of the state Republican convention in San Jose at which conservative activists are expected to challenge his more moderate direction. The governor's popularity appeared to be growing last month, following a conciliatory State of the State address in which he announced an ambitious plan to upgrade the state's aging infrastructure. But this month his numbers have reversed, mostly due to erosion of his Republican base. Schwarzenegger's approval rating fell to 35 percent among adults in the Public Policy Institute of...

As of 9-2-05 the U.S. deficit totaled over 7 trillion, 940 billion which is within 35 billion of the record deficit of 2004 and more than 10 billion more than the deficit of 2003. And cheerleaders like Larry Kudlow write "Psst the deficit is shrinking"!?! http://www.babylontoday.com/deficit_2005.htm http://www.babylontoday.com/index.htm#monthly_deficit

Union riveter Chester A. Riley would know what to say: What a revoltin’ development this is. Two major unions broke away from the AFL-CIO this week with others likely to follow. When the dust settles, the labor federation stands to lose a third of its membership. After 50 years of dominance in representing unionized workers, the AFL-CIO will now confront that which it abhors, competition. Union power is predicated on monopoly. Use our members or go out of business, Mr. Employer. Pay our dues or go without a job, Mr. Worker. Protect us from overseas competition, Mr. President. AFL-CIO boss...

Economics: Europe has been the source of many of America's most beloved fairy tales. Not all are of ancient origin. Take the European Union's insistence five years ago that its economy would leapfrog ours by 2010. The so-called Lisbon Strategy was unveiled with much fanfare. Struck in the Portuguese capital, the deal essentially predicted the EU economy would pass up America's and leave it in the dust. At the time, it sounded reasonable. The EU was adding new members, and the common wisdom was that the U.S., though a big military power, was suffering from what geostrategists like to call...

Kerry, Kerry, quite contrary, How do your coffers grow? With 527s and 501s, And ugly little Soros's dough. For the junior senator from Massachusetts, there's no escaping the fact that August was one long, hot month. (Hum. Maybe that's why he spent so much of it windsurfing.) And the rest of the season could shape up to be even more inclement for John F. Kerry. My clever jingle notwithstanding, the candidate has good reason to be contrary: No matter how rapidly his coffers have grown, his political fortunes are now shrinking at an alarming rate. If this downward trend continues,...

Ahh, Free at La -- Oops! Time's Up By Joe Robinson Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page B01 SANTA MONICA, Calif. "How do Americans do it?" asked the stunned Australian I met on a remote Fijian shore. He had zinc oxide and a twisted-up look of absolute bafflement on his face. I'd seen that expression before, on German, Swiss and British travelers. It was the kind of amazement that might greet someone who had survived six months at sea in a rowboat. The feat he was referring to is how Americans manage to live with the stingiest vacation allotment in the...

A FEW MONTHS AGO the Jesuit-run America magazine ran a smartly-designed full-page ad headlined with a pithy statement in large bold typeface: "Small is Good." The ad was for the American College of Louvain (ACL), the seminary in Belgium run directly by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the oldest national seminary for Americans, founded in 1857. "When it comes to business, bigger is usually better," the ad states. "When it comes to Church, does the same principle apply?" Heavens no, the ad claims, and ACL happens to be living proof-or so it claims: "For almost ten years, our...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. said on Thursday it used microscopic carbon molecules to emit light -- a breakthrough some scientists say might one day make faster and smaller computers. In the quest for ever-smaller computing devices, researchers are seeking to replace silicon as the foundation for chips. Researchers at IBM have been studying tiny carbon nanotubes -- molecules resembling rolls of chicken wire that are 50,000 times narrower than a human hair. By engineering the carbon nanotube, IBM said it was able to not only conduct current, but to create light that could someday be used...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Friday that President Bush was responsible for a "precipitous drop" in America's international stature and for an economy falling apart.</p> <p>Democrats will emphasize the country's weakened economy in the two weeks leading up to the elections for control of Congress, Daschle said.</p>